Gender Neutrality
Unless you are referring to an individual person whose gender you know, or if gender is otherwise relevant to your message, it is advisable to use gender-neutral language to eliminate bias in your text. Additionally, many gender-specific terms are beginning to fall into disuse and may make your text seem out-of-date. The gender neutrality filter includes two categories of detection.
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- In many cases, a tooltip includes a suggested replacement for the detection. Choose the Replace command to apply the suggestion: the text will be modified and the detection will disappear.
- Get ideas from the examples included in the guide articles on inclusive language by clicking the icon at the top of the list of detections.
Nouns
These detections include nouns for gender-specific job titles, such as policeman, as well as words that exclude a gender when referring to a group that may be (or certainly is) mixed-gender, such as wives or mankind. In the vast majority of cases, these nouns can easily be substituted for gender-neutral equivalents, such as police officer, spouses and humanity.
Pronouns
Gender-specific pronouns and their associated determiners, such as he or his, are obviously suitable when referring to an individual whose gender is known, or when their gender is otherwise relevant. In other cases, consider using gender-neutral pronouns such as they and their.